The Witchery

By James Reese

New York Times bestselling author James Reese has been praised for his lush and evocative prose, his bold exploration of illicit sexuality, his deft handling of historical settings, and his extraordinary rendering of the supernatural. His novels are sumptuous trips back in time to an era filled with unforgettable characters, human strife, and emotions that transcend time. Now, in his most imaginative book to date, Reese takes the witch Herculine on a voyage that will test her in every way, elevating her from the depths of despair to triumph.

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Herculine is summoned from self-imposed exile by her teacher, the witch Sebastiana d'Azur, and told to sail from the Florida territory to Havana. There she is to search out one Queverdo Brù—a cruel and demonic man whose house holds terrible secrets—to learn of a certain "surprise." But lies and truths conspire to separate Herculine from those she loves, and she finds herself alone with Brù, who sees in her something he has long sought, and now seeks to use, harshly, as he practices that most ancient of arts: alchemy.

Escaping Brù, Herculine sails from Havana, knowing Sebastiana is near. In the Florida Keys, she reunites with her and meets her "surprise"—the shocking product of a forbidden encounter ten years prior. Surviving an Indian attack on a sparsely settled key, Herculine and family decamp to Key West. There they set out to make their fortune—by means magical or otherwise—as Herculine is tested at every turn by the harsh landscape and haunted by thoughts of her own demise.

With The Witchery, James Reese brings to a close a remarkable trilogy—a story told by a character who "invades our consciousness" (Tampa Tribune) and set in "the heady atmosphere of a bygone era brought deftly to life" (Eric Van Lustbader). Spanning decades ravaged by war, disease, and ideals that tore a nation apart, Herculine's ultimately triumphant struggle is both a universal one—marked by love, loss, fear, and regret—and yet quite particular, as told by one of the most inventive novelists working today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061758607

James Reese

James Reese is the author of The Witchery, The Book of Spirits, and The Book of Shadows. He lives in South Florida and Paris, France.

Book preview

Part One

Nigredo

Chapter One

It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded by many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

—SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It

WHAT A SIGHT: HAVANA HARBOR SEEN BY LATE DAYLIGHT.

I remember it well; for indeed we arrived at sunset, and sadly heard it told that we hadn’t time to enter the harbor before dark. This the firing cannons of the Morro Castle made clear: the harbor, indeed the city itself, was closed till next the sun rose. It was slight consolation hearing our captain opine that it was just as well, that the harbor would be too crowded to navigate at night. And so we found a good offing within sight of the Morro’s walls, near enough to hear the bells of the city count out the quarter hours; and there we lay off and on all night, tacking in accord with the winds and the water.

For hours I’d watched the silver-green isle of Cuba rising from the blue, ever more anxious yet knowing not that the Athée—aboard which we’d sailed from Savannah—was racing the setting sun. Had I known this, had I known that each evening the Morro’s cannons announced that crepuscular closing of the harbor and city, I’d have been sick from nervous upset; for though I’d been sent to Havana, I had only the vaguest notion of what, of who I’d find there.

Would Sebastiana d’Azur—my discoverer, my Soror Mystica, who’d absented herself for so long, who’d cast away her courtly renown after the Revolution and retired to her crumbling chateau upon the Breton shore—…would Sebastiana herself be there? Who was the we of whom the aged witch had written so cryptically? We have a surprise for you, said the letter sent to me in St. Augustine. Would I have to face again Sebastiana’s consort: the man, the menace, the faux demon Asmodei? He who’d hated me from first sight. He who’d sought to harm me. Oh, but Sebastiana’s absence had surprised me once before, had it not? In New York. In years past. When I—so deeply needful, so lost—had gone thither, as again she’d directed, by post, only to find yet another epistle apologizing for her absence and consigning me to the care of a houseful of whoring witches. (Mistake me not, sister: I loved the Cyprians, and still mourn their loss and the dissolution of the Duchess’s House of Delights.) More likely I, nay, we—yes: I had a companion aboard the Athée—…more likely we would walk alone among the Havanans with no clue but one: Somewhere in the city there lived a monk whom Sebastiana, in her directing letter, had identified by the single initial Q.

And so, though I knew not what, or who I would find in Havana, still I hoped to find such things fast. Thus, each wave separating the schooner Athée from its mooring in Havana Harbor was a hated thing…. But mark, for so it was the case: the waves had been few as we approached over the Straits, and our six-day sail from Savannah had been smooth, too smooth and slow: often we’d been becalmed, and had lain in want of wind.

Finally, finally all aboard knew the sight of the Pan de Matanzas—that Cuban mountain molded by a great hand in mimicry of a loaf of bread—and nearer, nearer there could be seen sown fields of cane and coffee bordered by tall, wind-waltzing palms. Nearer still, and the lighthouse could be discerned in detail, so, too, the forts of the Morro and Punta flanking the harbor’s entrance: like fists of stone they were, wrapped round the harbor’s narrow neck and seeming to strangle the inlet. And beyond, faint as my fate, the city itself climbed the hillsides: buildings in pastel shades, showing roofs of reddish tile.

The Athée’s sails had been unfurled to steal from those swaying palms what winds there were; and we beat toward the harbor as best we could, forsaking the changeable hues of the Gulf Stream for the sapphirine seas nearer the island. I imagine now that we truly hurried; for our captain must have known that the harbor would close come dark. By the light of a low, westering sun, flying fish rose beside us: silvery knives they seemed, hurled shoreward by the hand of Neptune. Seabirds were ten times more numerous, now we were nearer land. Gulls cried, and signed their chalky Xs on the slate of the sky…. Sonear, yes; but it was then, with the gulls wheeling overhead, that we aboard the Athée saw a schooner on the opposite tack make for the harbor even as the signals were dropped and the first cannon fired. Of course, I concluded the worst: here were pirates, espied by the Cuban guard and now taking shot. But no: my companion—even more anxious than I to debark, surely—passed to me the dire news had from the captain just as the lighthouse spun to cast its first beam upon the sea: the city was closing.

And so it was that, our suit for entry refused, the Athée bobbed another night at sea. Suddenly I found myself in possession of the thing I wanted least of all: long starlit hours to worry about what was to come, and to worry about what we’d done; for yes, a crime had been committed, such that we—the crew and cast of the Athée—were now one fewer than we’d been when setting sail from Savannah. Of course, none but Calixto and I knew the why, the when, the how of the crime that had been committed: murder.

Indeed, we two wanted off the Athée come dawn; and all that starry, windless night I sat wondering how best to achieve this. How best to avoid the captain, and Cuban customs, and the inquisition sure to come?

I’d locked and left my house on St. George Street, in St. Augustine, not two weeks prior, my departure prompted by two facts:

Fact the first: As said, Sebastiana had written directing me toward Havana; and promising the disclosure of certain secrets in that city; and:

Fact the second: I knew I’d die a wasting death, or lead a lifeless life in anticipation of the Coming of the Blood, that sickening spill that comes—sometimes suddenly, burstingly; sometimes slowly, as a malaise that can have no other cause—to claim every witch on the last of her days, regardless of whether she loves life or has suffered a surfeit of it…yes, I’d do naught but long for my own Red End if I were to stay in that house all alone, hearing its walls echoing, echoing the stories of all I’d lost. Through said losses, and the survival of same, I’d grown stronger, much, but only as a witch. As a man, as a woman, enfin as me, I was weak, and hadn’t the will to welcome or use said powers, powers that somehow I’d siphoned off the dead, as we few witches who are death-allied must perforce do whenever we encounter massed souls still clinging to life…. Ego sum te peto et videre queto. Which is to say, The dead rise and come to me…. What these powers were, specifically, I could not have said, and cannot say now: The Mystery of Mysteries.

And once I returned home from deep in the Florida scrub, I returned to the shelter, the safety of St. George Street: a ship returned to port; but soon enough—in the accusatory quiet, in the stillness of an unhappy house—I came to understand that though ships may be sheltered and safe in port, they are built to sail. And so I set off upon receipt of Sebastiana’s letter.

Set off for Havana, I supposed; though in truth, I might have ended up elsewhere. Indeed, I’d have gone as happily—that is to say, unhappily—to Havana as to another place unknown; for I sought only motion, any sensation that yet proved I was alive. And all I knew as I rode inland from St. Augustine, seeking again the river St. John, was that I would ride its odd, northward flow to the sea, and let the sea decide my fate. This I did, hurrying not; for I no longer held to much hope—of salvation, of happiness—and only hope could have hurried me.

Hélas, I set out over rutted roads and long, long stretches of scratching scrub. Had I been in a hurry, I’d have hired a horse. Or taken directly to the sea at St. Augustine rather than heading slightly northward (as indeed I did) when my desired destination—Havana—lay to the south. Instead, caving to coincidence—I’d take whatever boat would come—as well as a nature too melancholic, and being ever mindful of the river’s living metaphor, I sought the confused flow of the St. John’s and told myself I’d reach the sea in time; whereupon I’d reset my sites toward Cuba…. Motion—be it northward, southward, or wayward—would suffice for now.

I’d sailed the St. John’s a decade prior, when first I’d come to Florida; and so, when finally I achieved the river again and saw its oaks overhanging the slow flow, their Spanish moss dripping down as a living filigree, I may even have been—dare I say it?—happy; for a spell.

I secured passage aboard a passing sloop of slight burden already laden with lumber, named the Espérance. I had money enough to ensure that I’d not be expected to earn my keep, neither upon the St. John’s nor in the sloop’s home port of Savannah (not so northward sitting as to be wholly off course, thought I). Mind: I am not lazy, or rather was not lazy then—admittedly, we dead might sometimes be said to laze—but rather, I feared that work of any sort would result in my weaving myself into the ship’s web of ropes, or worse: falling overboard into that river crowded with crocodilians…. No: I told the captain in terms certain that it was not a working passage I sought. I had not come to hire on, but rather would pay handsomely—and handsome is aptly chosen, as I traveled, then, in manly guise—to be let aboard, whereupon I’d secrete myself all the way to Savannah so as not to be any bother at all.

As said, the Espérance sailed low in the river, its shallow belly full of pine planks. Too, more boards had been laid upon the deck and fastened with strapping. Though space had been left abaft the mainmast for the pumps, sitting close unto the bulkhead, the rest of the sloop was crowded, quite. Pine was profit, and no shipboard space was spared: so very redolent it all was of pitch and planed wood. Neither was there a bunk to spare belowdecks. These—hammocks, in fact, in which the sleeping crew swung—were claimed by those who, to judge from their limbs, tarry to the elbow and knee, had felled, hewn, and stacked the sawn pine. So it was I was told to bed down as best I could. Such an arrangement might have put off another gent—so I hoped to appear: a youngish gent of some means and strange ways; in other words: a man best left alone—but of course my relief was great at not having to share close quarters with six well-salted types. No: I’d have bared my breasts and strapped myself to the bowsprit, sailing as the Espérance’s figurehead, if it had meant securing that solitude that had long been requisite to the keeping of my doubly-sexed secrets.

The first day of the sloop’s homeward passage ended without event; but not so night number one.

I’d been sitting amidships, well free of all stays and sails and such troublesome stuff, and had scribbled away the late hours of the afternoon. It’s likely I dared not write in the Book of Shadows I then kept—too dangerous, this—but yet I recall having in hand a stub of pencil and some pages now lost, bound in a book of blackest kid (a hide nearly as dark as my disposition). All was well, with the salts too tired to trouble themselves with me. But then the sun set, and we—nay, I alone; for no man of the Espérance seemed equally troubled—…I was beset by so many millions of mosquitoes it seemed the swarm, with some coordination, could have lifted me bodily from off the deck and dropped me down in Savannah, sparing me the sail. But rather than carrying me thither, those pests determined to sup upon me, to stick deep their syringes and draw, draw, draw.

Others of the men seemed immune to the bother and bite, and took no action but to concede as little skin as possible to the skeeters, rolling down their sleeves and slacks. A few lit smudge pots and carried them about like lanterns. The reflected lantern light threw ghostly swimmers in the drink. Later, the salts retired to their swinging hammocks to drink and sleep away what stings they suffered. Me? I had no refuge but the night, and the darkness, which—fortunately—hid what happened to those stinging things once they’d supped too much of my witch’s blood.

Yes: soon the chore, the challenge, lay not in fending off the skeeters’ bite but rather in concealing the myriad specks upon my skin; for the pests, witch-fed, fell dead with their stingers still sunken into my skin. No doubt by daylight I’d have seemed some species of dalmatian dog, bedotted by the dead creatures. Indeed, even by moonlight I could see my exposed skin darkening to black: looking down at my hands, I saw what seemed the black lace gloves of a lady of Spain.

The two men of the watch I heard snigger. One of them winked at me with an ivoried eye, evincing delight that this dandy come amongst the crew suffered so. I thought to refute the sniggering, to say that in fact I was not suffering the skeeters but rather was…bothered by them, merely. Instead, I said nothing. Which is not to say that I did not act in my own defense; for—and now it seems I may have willed this—he of the ivoried eye soon was struck by a thunderous fit of coughing, one which caused him to gulp greatly at the black, buzzing air and swallow down skeeters by the battalion. Had I brought his barking on? I did not know for certain; but yes, there came a soupçon of guilt, such that I rose and betook myself nearer the bow and further from the men of the watch. But when behind me it seemed I heard more sniggering, the guilt soon was gone and I fell to wondering, pointedly, what I could conjure to stifle the men. Were there catbirds in the shoreside trees who might be willed to dive, to dart about the men’s heads? Or perhaps a snake might be induced to drop down from the branches overhead, branches that looked sulfurous now, well nigh infernal in that light coming from the braziers bolted onto the bow and crowded with tarry knots of pine? Such were my thoughts—I do confess it—when I turned to see not the sniggering men of the watch, but another of the crew: the cabin boy, name of Calixto.

Cal—as he was called—had brought me a bit of luncheon earlier on. Whether he’d done so of his own accord, or had been directed to action by the captain, I cannot say. Regardless, I’d been grateful for the fare, though it was but a bit of lobscouse—beef and bread, this is, cooked together without benefit of spice—along with a skin of switchel to wash it back. Now here came the boy again, burdened by a smudge pot and a mass of netting; which latter I supposed he’d cast over the river, for certain species of fish—like certain species of men—surface only after dark; the difference being: such fish one might sometimes seek, whilst such men are best left alone.

But no: on came Cal, toward where I sat…. And if earlier the sun had seemed to gild the boy—as indeed it had—now he was ensilvered by the moon sieving down through the trees.

As before, he said not a word, this blond, sea-bred boy of some sixteen, seventeen years of age. Rather he set straight to work; and by the scant light of the moon, and the flickering flames of the smudge pot and braziers, I watched in wonder—wonder that soon ceded to delight; and delight that ceded to gratitude in its turn, gratitude deep as the surrounding dark.

He had not come to fish. It was no seine he had in hand. It was netting of a much, much tighter weave: muslin, I suppose. It was a square, one side of which was weighted by a piece of driftwood stitched into its hem. Strings depended from the remaining three sides; and these—in an athletic show, done so fast I knew not what I watched—Cal tied fast to the boom, and to the shrouds, and to a davit, till finally the net hung upon the deck as a tent, a triangulate refuge from the swarming skeeters.

Quickly as he’d come, Calixto disappeared. I stood in wonder. A moment more and he returned, this time burdened by bedding. Crude bedding, yes, true, but bedding nonetheless. This he proceeded to set upon the deck. And then, carefully, he tucked the edges of the net beneath the pallet, all save one side, which now he raised up. With the smile of a gallant, he motioned me into this odd construction. I knew not what to say, knew not what to do. Words of thanks stalled in my throat. But then the cabin boy nodded me on with a measure of urgency, and—as he scratched at his own welts, and I’d not be the one to cause him a moment’s more suffering—I verily dove past him, ducking beneath his arm as if the boom were a sort of fallen maypole and he a suitor. Suffice to say: I may have let slip my masculine mask; but if so, I took it up forthwith. From within my shelter I thanked him. I sought some pocketed coin (thinking this was owed to—and sought by—all who did me a courtesy). All the while, the boy spoke not a word.

Having tucked me tightly in, he stood. I looked up at him. Stay: no doubt I stared as if I’d never see him again. He’d not have seen me staring, of course; for I’d long since had to sport, at all times, those blue-lensed spectacles that hid my eyes, eyes which—in time with my increasing strength—had grown fixed, and now, no matter my mood, showed constantly l’oeil de crapaud, the Eye of the Toad, or the true witch’s mark, the sister-sign (so called because the circle of the pupil cedes to the shape of a toad’s splayed-toed foot)…. Yes, doubtless I stared. What? Did I think he’d swim from the Athée? That I’d wake to learn he’d ascended somehow, that indeed he’d been the angel he’d seemed?…Sadly, soon I saw naught but his back; for he turned on his heel and headed off, dissolving into the dark.

I may have sputtered a second thank-you. I may have bade him good-bye or good night. Regardless, my words broke not upon the boy. He was gone, and I might have spoken with equal effect to the trees or the stars and moon beyond; for now I lay upon my back, staring up. And it was in that same pose that I’d eventually fall asleep, knowing not that age-old superstition of sailors: To sleep topside, with one’s face full to the moon, is to invite ill fortune.

…Indeed.

Chapter Two

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame—As such it may well pass—

—EDGAR ALLAN POE, Song

ONCE OFF THE RIVER AND ONTO THE SEA, THE ESPÉRANCE demanded more of her men; and boy. All but the latter could be heard cursing her—always her, as is the custom of the sea—…cursing her as though she were some sea whore, at once desired and disdained. But their actions belied the saucy epithets they spewed: they tended the ship with care. She, in turn, provided safe passage seaward and toward Savannah.

I grew less and less at ease whilst sailing aboard the Espérance; for I felt shamed, in a way, seeing the crew so busied. True: I’d been aboard ships before; but I’d not acquired any sailorly skills. Indeed, I was better suited to the hold than the decks, being only slightly less burdensome than the tons of pine planking the ship had taken on.

It was our second, perhaps our third day out that I thought to offer my services (such as they were) to the captain. Surely there was something I could do; for I stood as tall as any of the men and, in accord with said stature, was strong. (In sisterly terms I was very strong, but of course that did not signify: Would I see to my assigned chores by the application of Craftwork? No indeed.)…Mightn’t I stand watch? Surely I could scrub something? The shipboard scrubbing—against that corrosive salt borne on both the water and air—was incessant.

…It seemed I’d donned a man’s pride along with the kerseymere pants and the piebald vest I now wore over my blouse (a full blouse, the better to hide my swaddling, which in turn hid my breasts: smallish, yes, but big enough to betray me). How I yearned then for a skirt or dress, and the solitude such apparel would have afforded me. As a woman, I’d have been seen as mere ballast aboard the ship, shunned, left to amuse myself and while away the sea hours as I saw fit, as long as I roused neither wrath nor desire, nor impeded the ship’s progress in any way…. Oh, to be shunned, yes: it seemed a fate much preferable to that of a man with no purpose. Hélas, my dress had been decided: I’d boarded as a man, and a man I must remain until Savannah, at least.

Just as I stood, determined to seek the captain and offer said services, a wave broke upon the bow of the Espérance. Not much of a wave, mind; for, as said, the sea was then quite placid. Yet the boat bucked, and from deep in its bowels there came a moan not much louder than the one I made whilst falling back upon my buttocks, landing such that my own bones creaked in chorus with the ship’s…. Best to stay put, I supposed. Best to stay out of the sailors’ way. That was the service I’d offer; and to do so I need not apply to the captain at all…. And so, there I sat that sunny spring day. Land lay off to port. As I looked to it, I wondered: Was it Florida still?

Whilst staring at the shore and drifting into dreams, I’d taken up a spare length of rope. I refer to it as spare, though already I knew that nothing aboard a ship is spare: everything has it purpose and its place. More apt to deem the rope stolen, I suppose—by me. Still, there the rope lay in its knotted, rat-gnawed length. Perhaps I thought I’d appear useful, tasking myself with the untying of the rope’s several knots. (Manly pride is not doffed as easily as manly attire.)…And thusly was I occupied when I heard the captain’s voice, and a reply falling from on high:

It was Cal, in the rigging, calling down an echo of the captain’s command.

…The Captain. Who now stood before me, staring down.

I bade him hello. And though I’d also learned not to expect kindness from a ship’s captain—leastways not once the sails are set and one’s coin is irrecoverable—still I was surprised at his silence, the more so as it gave way to an open show of scorn; for the captain laughed. At me. And quite coldly, too. The sound both shamed and chilled me.

With a harrumph the captain turned, leaving me to the Gordian task I’d set myself. No doubt I redoubled my efforts at untying the rope—I’d show him!—but I might as well have sat trying to peel the white from off a seashell. I’d naught to show for my efforts but blistering thumbs and split nails, one or two of which I’d bent back to the quick. That, and an increase of shame that took the shape of sweat, pooling at the small of my back.

So it was that when I heard a single word spoken—Why?—I supposed it came from the captain, returned to mortify me more. I lifted my head in hopes my tongue would prove itself a lash, that somehow I’d say something to…But of course it was not the captain. It was he: Cal, come down from the rigging to stand before me and wonder, aloud, Why?

Why not? I countered, defensively; for I’d spoken before I saw that it was he—Cal—and not the surly, shaming captain who’d come.

Indeed, at first I was unable to see who it was stood before me. Something—the ship or the sun—had shifted; and he was haloed: darkened by the sun behind him, and darkened the more by the glasses I wore. And when he moved, just so…well, then I was truly blinded: the sun came in a vicious shaft, and the sunshades were all but useless. Only when the sunspots cleared, only when sight returned, could I see Cal standing before me. Thusly, toe to top:

His broad feet were bare, and each took his weight in turn, in accord with the slight roll of the ship. His toes maintained a simian-like grip upon the smooth deck; a deck that he himself swabbed each day at dawn. Simian indeed; for I’d seen Cal climb that rigging wherein he was so sure of himself, swinging as a monkey might, vine to vine. Oh, but no monkey, this: Cal’s skin was hairless, or rather the hair on his legs—exposed, south of his scarred knees—had been rendered golden by the sun, and barely showed against skin of a similar shade: bronze, let me say. The calves were as muscled as the feet seemed, and so, too, was this true of his forearms and hands: it is the gripping strength of the extremities that keeps one safe when sailing, and the muscles of survival develop fast. Points north of his knees were concealed by those duck trousers dirty with tar spots and whatnot, patched with canvas strips and held to his hips—barely—by a belt of rope. Truer to say the trousers hung from his hips, and hung low enough to show what I’d only ever seen on statuary: that V whose angles decline from hips to crotch, and which I’ve heard referred to—by sculptors, anatomists, and, well, the whoring Cyprians (connoisseurs of another kind)—as Apollo’s Girdle. Above the knotted belt there rose a plane of belly, marble-hard and just as white; for Calixto was rarely without the shirt he then wore, its lower buttons undone. It was red fading unto pink, and if once it had been wool, now it was worn as smooth as chamois. Oddly, the shirt did not button all the way to the neck. It was donned over the head, I suppose, and from the shoulders it hung as an untailored square, seeming more pennant than shirt. Only its well-ventilated sides—strapping crossed from the back to front panels, each so crudely tailored I was certain the boy had sewn the shirt himself—let show the shape beneath; and through its open sides I saw that plane of stomach, its muscles segmented, strong from hard use. This shirt, or shift, was sleeveless—many a sailor has troubled with sleeves, as they beg to be snagged at by stays and wound up in winches; and so it was I fastened strapping round my own full sleeves, tying them tourniquet-tight—and showed arms well muscled, and rising to shoulders that squared off the boy’s body, granting him a semblance of strength that, when first I’d seen him, I’d not remarked; for it was the boy I’d seen then, not the emergent man.

Indeed, Cal had at first appeared…dare I say it? Winsome. Yes. There was something quite appealing, quite…light about the boy. I’d not have deemed it strength, no. Rather, he was…radiant; a being into which both sun and sea had insinuated themselves. Blond he was, through and through; and blond only because the Maker—in a rare show of economy—long ago chose not to make men of gold. But something even more precious than gold shone forth from Cal when he smiled with lips drawn in lines too perfect, too precise, painted too pink, and parting to show teeth strongly white and a foretooth rather charmingly chipped. Indeed, when he smiled—infrequently, at first—one saw not the rest of his face. Rather, the sum of the smile was so great one saw not its component parts: the nose crinkling, the downy cheeks shifting on their prominent bones, the eyes shining to shame a sea that knew, or thought it knew, every extant shade of blue. And all this, all this was topped by a mop of sun-streaked curls that Cal would cut—with whatever blade was at hand—only when they fell to obscure his sight.

Here was a boy made to the Botticellian standard. And before him I sat wondering…Stay: to say I wondered implies a clarity of thought which then I lacked; for, simply, I was stunned. Had I been able to wonder, a question such as this might well have come: Do I want this boy, or do I wish to be him?

I’d asked such questions of myself previously; for such was my relation to beauty whenever I found it in human form. So it often goes with the homely…. Stay: to qualify: As a child I’d deemed myself homely, mistaking difference—oh, I was different, that much I knew—for ugliness, with self-loathing the result. This was a judgment no nun or fellow pupil disabused me of. Rather, the taunting and subsequent, much-sought solitude of my youth only reinforced it. Later, having learned beauty’s broader terms, I saw that I…well, if I was not a beauty to beg the bristles of a Botticelli’s brush, still I was…Enfin, I was me: tall for a girl or even a boy, lean, long of limb, and graced with a face others saw as…plain, I suppose. I was blond, pale of complexion, and therefore fast to flush (which trait I hated second only to my hands, which I thought too long-fingered and strong). And I’d eyes of a greenish-blue hue; though later, of course, the iris would nearly be overwhelmed by my misshapen pupils holding to the Toad’s Eye. Not appealing; but so be it…

What I mean to say is this: Though I no longer saw myself as monstrous, hardly, still I quelled before such beauty as that borne by this boy nearly half my age. And so there I sat, sun-struck, beauty-blinded, and dumb; and suddenly so very serious about the rope I had in hand.

Why? he asked again, with a nod toward the knots.

I could not think of an answer both suitable and true; for I knew a man would never speak of the shame I’d sought to keep at bay with busyness. Neither could I continue to ogle my interlocutor. So: silence, and sideways glances; till the boy sat down beside me—standing, he was perhaps six inches shorter than I: tall, in other words—and said, whilst proffering his right hand, Cal. Short of Calixto.

Henry, said I; and though this was a lie, it had come to seem the truth; for I’d not used my given name—Herculine—in a long, long while.

Henry, said I once more, careful to prune my pronunciation of the French that sometimes fogged it, and did, betimes, till the day I died. No, not Henri; but Henry. At times I wished I’d chosen a name with greater care, a name with greater flair; but I had not, and could not do so now without confusing myself further. I’d grown accustomed to Henry, and answered to it without hesitation. So Henry I’d have to remain, though always, always I’d be Herculine at heart.

…Herculine? Qui était-elle?

A being of Breton origin born into a doubly-sexed body, back about 1806 or so. Unlike the date of my death—d. October 11, 1846—the date of my birth was uncertain, as often it is with orphans…. Anorphan, yes. I was six (or so) when the tale of my life turned trite, taking on those characteristics common to the heroines of the novels I pored over in my youth. I was sent to the Ursulines by my dying mother with naught but a note stuffed into the pocket of my Sunday shift; and if maman told the nuns my date of birth, well, they never told me. At the order’s convent school I was raised by…Stay: my too clever pen wanted to write the word wolves. As in: I was raised by wolves. And well I could have been; for certain of those Ursuline sisters were downright lupine in both appearance and aspect. Mais hélas, non: I was raised not by wolves but by nuns, nuns to whose care I was consigned by my mother, dying of the Blood. (Was maman a working witch? Did she know her true nature, and sense that the Blood—that dreaded, rubicund flood—was coming? I cannot say. And if once I could recall my mother, I cannot now. Of course, I could have. I could have tried to divine a dream of the past, one wherein I might have seen her, maybe even found the father I’d known not at all; but this I never did, owing to an abiding fear of divination; for the divining of dreams is not mere sisterly sport, and sentimentality never seemed reason enough to risk a Sighting.)

That convent school under Ursuline command—which I deign not to name—clung to a cliff; or rather, I recollect it as a cliff though I suppose it was but a dune, down the friable slope of which sand and rock tumbled into the bay and from thence into the channel beyond. There, upon those far northern shores of France, the tides were, indeed are extreme, and seemed to me salted tongues coming in continuum to lap at that strand above which we lived our lives to the tick, tock of the Church’s clock.

We were sixty-odd girls far from town and tribe. Within that cold, stony pile, the sorority committed itself to one of two worlds. The nuns and those whose fates had been decided by plainness or poverty, myself included, looked toward the Hereafter. We worked to assure our ascension. The balance of the girls, while yet made mindful of Christ, his sufferings, et cetera, were prepared for ascension of another sort. They would return to the world and rise within the Home and rule over such types as me: those who, if they chose not to affiance themselves to the Savior, were destined to slave in sculleries or schoolhouses, as maids and schoolmistresses.

Luckily, I was let to study; for I’d an aptitude that was recognized by the mother superior, Sister Marie-des-Anges, whose kindness would cause both her fall and mine. (The charge? Satanic congress.) From the shelves of Mother Marie’s library I culled all I could. I read promiscuously: papal bulls were as one with the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe and the plays of Shakespeare, whom I’d adore all my days; such that:

I, thus neglecting worldy ends, all dedicated

To closeness and the bettering of my mind.

Closeness? At the convent school? Well, more about that anon (as the Bard would have it)…. For now let me say that if I opened a book written in an unknown, or as yet unknown language, I did not shut it but rather reached down the proper dictionary to set beside it. Words were a refuge. What friends I had were fictional. And through those books I lead a thousand lives, each better than the graceless one I’d been given.

Thusly did the years pass; and still I lived all too literally within the libraries of that convent school, preferring the ashes of life to its fire. Secreted there—as opposed to the dortoire with its abhorred intimacies—I could keep myself apart, could keep the secret of my very self. Of course, it would be years, many years before I’d learn that Latinate term I so disdained, and which again I commit to these pages for clarity’s sake alone: hermaphrodite. And though I could list the Ptolemies by the dates of their reigns, and could distinguish Pliny from Pliny the Elder by a line or two from their respective pens, and though I had adequate Greek by twelve or so, still I did not know that a growing girl will one day bleed as a matter of course, or that a boy will one day wake with the salt of salacious dreams spent onto his skin or sheets. I had the ancients, yes, but I knew no man of my day; for they—predators all—were kept at bay, beyond our walls. I had the heroines of novels beyond number, but I had no mother, no sister, no kindly cousin to tell me what a girl must needs know. In short, the scales of my self sat imbalanced. And neither were they righted, or brought into balance when finally I learned, or rather was told my true nature. Man, woman, witch.

At nineteen or twenty, what was I to make of so strange a pronouncement? And one delivered by saviors—so I soon deemed them—chief among whom was a witch, Sebastiana d’Azur, insisting that I, too, was Witchkind. Worse still were those in league with this witch: Father Louis and Madeleine, priest and paramour, incubus and succubus, who came before Sebastiana to offer proofs of my perversion, of the too literal strangeness of my person. Mon Dieu, what a show that had been!…Enfin, when finally I knew what I was, the knowledge seemed of scant significance. Truly. For still I was lost within myself; and if earlier I’d had but one world to find my way in, here now was the Shadow World as well.

And now, more than a decade after my discovery and my initiation into that other world, the Otherworld, there I sat beside Calixto, quite literally at sea: as lost as ever I’d been.

Sitting beside me, Calixto set his hands on mine, as if together we might untie those stubborn knots. This, of course, caused my heart to hammer. Soon our hands were joined in a strange admixture of courtship and combat, and I grew confused: Who held to whom? Doubtless it was I who held too long to Calixto’s hands, yes, past all purpose; but I remember being loath to let them go, so intrigued was I by their many textures: the smooth webs spreading from forefinger to thumb, the calluses marking the underside of every knuckle, and oh, the warmth, the wonderful warmth of his hands, of him.

Perhaps to reclaim at least one of his hands, Cal gave mine too great a shake: a greeting; such that the rope slipped from our mutual grip…. How I always hated that aspect of meeting men as a man: the too-hard handshake; but, in this case, the ensuing ritual served a secondary purpose: it recalled me to myself. And soon I’d summoned sense enough to say, Calixto…Spanish, is it?

Smiling, he offered no answer. Instead, taking up the rope, he asked—in an accented English that told me I’d guessed correctly—"Why worry about knots that is…that are no good?" His voice was deep, but deepening still; and in its tone I heard that his mistake had embarrassed him.

I nodded; which was no answer at all. And I watched stupefied as Calixto, taking up some sort of steely tool that I’d seen pegged to the mainmast, undid the knots in a trice, as another man might undo the laces of his shoe. The tool was a marlinespike: a needle the length of my forearm, and fashioned for the splaying of rope and the tying of knots. As he worked I watched not his hands—which moved too quickly to teach me anything—but his face; and though we sat shoulder to shoulder, and the sun came angling down onto him, still I saw no stubble upon his chin or cheek, none at all. More envy now, more of that heady mix of covetousness and craving, as I was acutely aware of stubble; for though mine came in as lightly and as blond as Calixto’s, still I took care to shave it close when putting forth my womanly self.

Here, said he, handing me back the now-knotless length of rope.

I took it, careful not to show too much gratitude. (A woman would. A man must refrain.) Just…just busying myself, said I with a shrug of my shoulders.

Now you can busy you-self by tying. Is easier, no? He’d split the single rope into its several strands, and these he sat tying into a quite complicated knot. To tie is easier than to…

"To untie, sí," said I, proffering the word he sought; but quickly I negated the Spanish affirmative by shaking my head; for I hadn’t much Spanish, and did not want to intimate otherwise. True: long ago, at school, I’d made it through Quixote, but to do so I’d needed a quite precise dictionary and well nigh a hundred candles. Rarely had I had occasion to speak Spanish, even in St. Augustine, where I’d earned my keep translating a variety of tongues by aid of study, yes, but also the Craft and a certain tisane I’d concocted.

Here, said Calixto, setting his hands atop mine once again and shimmying nearer. If earlier we’d been shoulder to shoulder, now we were hip to hip as well. Like this. I tried to still the trembling of my large and once-hated hands by holding my breath: vainly; for within a minute I sat both trembling and gasping for air like a landed fish. I resorted to concentration: a specialty of us bookish types. I’d concentrate upon the task at hand, or rather hands, plural; for Cal’s were upon my two, our twenty fingers tying I knew not what types of knot. Oh yes, concentrate I did, such that the trembling stopped and my breath came regularly; and so it is that I could—thenceforth—tie a Turk’s-head knot. And often I did, in later days. Not for its utility, of course; but rather because it came to seem a sweet souvenir, despite its reminding me that I’d committed murder on behalf of the boy.

Chapter Three

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren land.

—SHAKESPEARE, The Tempest

…CALIXTO. CUBAN-BORN BUT BRED TO THE SEA: HIS mother died on the brink of his tenth year and, his father seeking to drown his grief in that rum for which the island is famed, Cal was left to shift for himself amongst his several siblings and sundry relations. Soon it seemed the wiser course to quit Havana aboard any boat going; and so he lied his way aboard a whaler based south of Boston. Shipboard, he learned English, yet still spoke it brokenly when first I met him on the St. John’s.

All this (and not a word more) I pulled